The Anthropology of Labor Unions

8: Economic Globalization and Changing Capital-Labor Relations in Baja California’s Fresh-Produce Industry

157 The fresh-produce industry, within which transnational corporations organize production in developing countries that lack strong labor unions employing indigenous and other vulnerable segments of the workforce, raises the question of how economic globalization in this growing industrial sector affects workers’ ability to organize. It also raises the issue of whether the labor exploitation of indigenous and immigrant workers in Mexico and other Latin American countries fuels alternative forms of labor organization not based on class consciousness alone. This chapter explores these and other related questions from the vantage point of the San Quintín Valley (SQV), a region that specializes in the production of tomatoes and other horticultural products for export to the United States and other international markets. Over the past few decades the fresh-produce industry has served as a primary vehicle for developing nations to expand their presence in global trade and become key players in international commodity chains (Alvarez 2006). In Latin America particularly, the export of fresh fruits and vegetables has become one of the fastest-growing agricultural sectors, often employing migrant indigenous workers connected through transnational social networks (Alvarez 2006; Echánove 2001; Lara 1996; Llambi 1994; Loker e i g h t Christian Zlolniski Economic Globalization and Changing Capital-Labor Relations in Baja California’s Fresh-Produce Industry C h ri s t i a n Z l o l n i s k i 158 1999; Reynolds 1994). In Mexico the fresh-produce industry has increased dramatically because of the combined effect of foreign demand for fresh vegetables; the expansion of U.S. agribusinesses south of the border attracted by access to land, soft environmental regulations, and cheap labor; and national agrarian policies that have reduced government subsidies for traditional crops, privatized ejido lands, and promoted export agriculture along free-trade agreements such as the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (Alvarez 2005; Echánove 2001; Echánove and Steffen 2005; Marsh and Runsten 1988; Sanderson 1986; Weaver 2001). In addition to increasing the country’s economic competitiveness, the Mexican government has supported neo-liberal agrarian policies in hopes of reducing poverty, labor migration of rural workers to the United States, and the potential for social and political instability—especially among indigenous workers. After all, indigenous political rebellions in Mexico since the mid-1990s have shown the ability of marginalized workers to respond to the state’s neo-liberal projects (Nash 2001). Yet scholarship on the fresh-produce industry has focused mainly on the macro forces driving the new international division of labor in agriculture, ignoring the question of how such forces shape the working conditions of farm laborers employed in this sector and their opportunities to organize. Based on grounded ethnographic studies, anthropologists are in a privileged position to document the effects of the globalization of food production on different locales, its impact on farmworkers’ labor and working conditions, and their ability to mobilize to defend their labor rights. Ethnographic studies can also challenge the premise of globalization as a homogenizing force, showing that rather than social fragmentation and disruption of local institutions and communities, globalization can also lead to collective responses that challenge these forces (Nash 2007). This chapter builds upon this approach by focusing on the SQV as a recent product of the increasing penetration of U.S. agribusiness corporations south of the border. Its local economy is based on contract agriculture , an export-oriented system in which foreign agribusiness corporations supply capital and technology and control key decisions in the production process, while local growers provide land and labor and manage production on the site (Martínez Novo 2004; Runsten and Griffith 1996; Zabin 1997). Local growers have developed close commercial links with U.S. distributing firms to market their products. Since 1994, NAFTA has provided additional opportunities to California growers to expand production in the SQV and E c o n o m ic G l o b a liz at i o n 159 other regions in Mexico. In addition, the 1992 reform of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution to allow the privatization of communal ejido lands made it easier for U.S. companies to buy or lease land in the region and to invest in infrastructure and technology. Because of these elements, the SQV is a natural laboratory to examine the economic and social effects of the developing fresh-produce industry and neo-liberal economic policies at a regional level...